Abu Zubaida's case poses conundrum for Obama

WASHINGTON — When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an al-Qaida leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed, and they were facing increasing pressure from the White House to get those secrets out of him.

The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of al-Qaida terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads.

In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations.

Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida — chiefly names of al-Qaida members and associates — was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.

Within weeks of his capture, U.S. officials had gained evidence that made clear they had misjudged Abu Zubaida. President George W. Bush had publicly described him as "al-Qaida's chief of operations," and other top officials called him a "trusted associate" of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and a major figure in the planning of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. None of that was accurate, the new evidence showed.

Abu Zubaida was not even an official member of al-Qaida, according to a portrait of the man that emerges from court documents and interviews with current and former intelligence, law enforcement and military sources. Rather, he was a "fixer" for radical Muslim ideologues, and he ended up working directly with al-Qaida only after Sept. 11 — and that was because the United States stood ready to invade Afghanistan.

Abu Zubaida's case presents the Obama administration with one of its most difficult decisions as it reviews the files of the 241 detainees still held in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Abu Zubaida — a nom de guerre for the man born Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein — was never charged in a military commission in Guantanamo Bay, but some U.S. officials are pushing to have him charged now with conspiracy.

Abu Zubaida, a 38-year-oldPalestinian now in captivity for more than seven years, had alleged links with Ahmed Ressam, an al-Qaida member dubbed the "Millennium Bomber" for his plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on New Year's Eve 1999. Jordanian officials tied Abu Zubaida to terrorist plots to attack a hotel and Christian holy sites in their country. And he was involved in discussions, after the Taliban government fell in Afghanistan, to strike back at the United States, including with attacks on American soil, according to law enforcement and military sources.

Others in the U.S. government, including CIA officials, fear the consequences of taking a man into court who was waterboarded on largely false assumptions, because of the prospect of interrogation methods being revealed in detail and because of the chance of an acquittal that might set a legal precedent. Instead, they would prefer to send him to Jordan.

Some U.S. officials remain steadfast in their conclusion that Abu Zubaida possessed, and gave up, plenty of useful information about al-Qaida.

"It's simply wrong to suggest that Abu Zubaida wasn't intimately involved with al-Qaida," said a U.S. counterterrorism official, speaking to the Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because much about Abu Zubaida remains classified.

"He was one of the terrorist organization's key facilitators, offered new insights into how the organization operated, provided critical information on senior al-Qaida figures … and identified hundreds of al-Qaida members. How anyone can minimize that information — some of the best we had at the time on al-Qaida — is beyond me."

Spanish court weighs investigation of Bush officials

A Spanish court has agreed to consider opening a criminal case against six former Bush administration officials, including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, over allegations they gave legal cover for torture at Guantanamo Bay, a lawyer in the case said Saturday. Human rights lawyers brought the case before leading antiterror Judge Baltasar Garzon, who agreed to send it on to prosecutors to decide whether it had merit, said Gonzalo Boye, one of the lawyers.

The other officials are Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy; former Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington; Justice Department officials John Yoo and Jay Bybee; and Pentagon lawyer William Haynes.

Garzon became famous for bringing charges against former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998, and he and other Spanish judges have agreed to investigate alleged abuses everywhere from Tibet to Argentina's "dirty war."

The country's record in prosecuting such cases has been spotty at best, with only one suspect extradited to Spain so far.